


Continue

by hnwriter



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Drama, F/M, Fix It Fic, Found Family, Grief, Healing, Marriage, Military, Recovery, in which i say go away filoni tbh, spousal loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 07:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13782687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hnwriter/pseuds/hnwriter
Summary: Hera, debriefing Yavin IV on her mission and Kanan’s death, reflects on her fractured memories and what Kanan means to her.





	Continue

**Author's Note:**

> There was a lot of of Jedi Night/Dume that I just….wasn’t happy with, so full disclosure, many elements of this are canon divergent. Namely the treatment of Hera’s torture and Kanera–I wanted a story that reflected Hera and the strength of the character I fell in love with and give her back the narrative that I felt she was robbed of within those episodes.
> 
> tw: drugging

            “General, if this is too strenuous right now—”

 

            “Senator Organa, I’m fine. Simply—” A heavy sigh escapes her lips, giving her pause to choose her words carefully. “—tired. It’s been busy here on Lothal.” Flashes of blue. Flashes of red. Long silences she doesn’t understand, burning hot. It’s what she has left.

 

            Hera looks up to the holo of Senator Organa, Senator Mothma, General Ackbar—some of the Alliance’s highest command. They need her debrief.

 

            They need her.

 

            She clears her throat again and looks up—maybe, on Yavin IV, they could be thinking how it’s unlike their new General to not speak immediately, purposefully. Maybe.

 

            Maybe.

 

            “The IT-O interrogator took most of my memories. I crashed in the streets and ran when I could. There was a bounty hunter I couldn’t outrun—Imperial officers were closing in. Comms were jammed and I couldn’t get online to check on the rest of my squadron. I found one other pilot—he’s still here on Lothal with my crew and Ryder’s forces. His call sign, I don’t—”

 

            “We understand, General Syndulla.” Mon Mothma’s voice is soft, constant—it’s not exactly personal enough to be comforting but Hera appreciates the leave to continue speaking nonetheless. Focusing between the details of what she can remember feels like grasping for a specific single grain of sand along an entire beach.

 

            She hates feeling incompetent, incapable.

 

            She hates not knowing the inside of her own memories more. The pause makes her think of Maul and she grimaces for as long as it takes to remember his eyes peering through her skull, his powers shredding through her consciousness.

 

 _It’s your mind, Hera. Still yours._ The self-reassurance feels like a lie but gives her enough comfort to steel herself. Another breath. The General continues.

 

            “I was captured sometime in the middle of the night by Governor Arhinda Pryce and taken to her personal office where I was—” Flashes of light. Dark rooms. Red eyes. Pain.

 

            “—interrogated.” Mothma and Organa shift. They know what she means. “I don’t know for how long. Ryder or Ezra Bridger may have a more accurate assessment for you there. Vice Admiral Thrawn was there at some point—I don’t-I don’t remember much of what he says.” Her teeth grit.

 

            Flashes of blue.

 

            “My crew assembled a rescue mission for me—Ezra Bridger led it, assisted by Sabine Wren and Kanan Jarrus.” His name is a silver weight on her tongue, binding her teeth together. Her blood runs cold and her breath turns to ice.

 

_The room is nearly dark and he appears as a bright and electric blue. She can barely walk, barely speak—something holds her up and she’s reminded it’s Kanan when she looks up. He’s everything. She feels nothing._

_“I hate your hair.” He’s oddly calm. His banter is weak. It’s nuance she can’t pick up on because—cold air. They’re out of the office. Suspended. Long way down._

_He’s carrying her—she rests her forehead to his neck and attempts to find a center. It doesn’t come. Cannot come. There’s worry in his gaze when she jumps at every noise. She can’t react. Can’t think. Can’t—flashes._

 She continues.

            “I don’t—remember—much. I know we met the same bounty hunter at some point. We escaped through the same gliders that my crew rode in on—it caught fire at some point—”

 

            _Flying. Cold air through the still wind of Lothal—there’s a parasitic sluggishness that’s invaded her skeleton, rendering half her strength into dead weight. Kanan’s next to her—Kanan—his hair’s different—and she’s flying—and she’s flying—_

_The Kalikori is stuck underneath her arm—Kanan got it back—he got it for her. It’s her’s. Not Thrawn’s. There’s a wish lodged between her hijacked consciousness and her past that is reminding her she wanted to add Kanan to it one day. Zeb and Ezra and Sabine and Chopper, too. Her family._

_Crashing. Flying. Falling. Running. Climbing. She’s moving but not thinking—there’s enough of her awake to be horrified of how little she can process but so much of her is smothered she can do nothing but scream within her own head. Scream, thrash, claw, and climb—the poison entangles all of her instincts into a sticky, thickened mess. She’s sinking, sinking, sinking—_

_“Kanan—”_

_He looks back at her. Green. Gray. Red._

_“Kanan, I love you.” A laugh. The present? The memory?_

_“You’re saying that like it’s something I haven’t heard before.” Tremble. Quiver. Fall. He grabs her waist and—that’s not—No, it is Kanan._

_“_ We landed at the fuel depot and climbed to the top.”

 

            “Why the fuel depot?” Ackbar asks. “It’s not exactly an easy place to land—"

 

            “I don’t know. Kanan just said go there. I couldn’t exactly strategize at the time.” Silence from the holocall.

 

            She continues.

 

            _“I’m saying it because—” Why was she saying it? Why was she speaking? Why were they there? Where was she—_

_“Hera, Hera, I know. It’s okay. I love you, too. You’re safe. Look, it’s Ezra and Sabine—” A ship in the distance. Boarding. The kids’ eyes. Sabine is flying. Not her flying. Not her flying—looking for Kanan. He’s still behind—_

             “The fuel depot was shot and Kanan held back the explosion with the Force.”

 

            _Red. Hot and burning—fire. Kanan’s eyes. It’s Lothal. It’s Gorse. It’s the first time she realized what he was and realizing now that this is all he’s going to be. It’s fragmented and fractured violently—Ezra is grabbing her—is that Ezra?—and it’s Kanan looking towards her. Sightless eyes that can’t see her and a soul that always did._

_“Kanan!” Why isn’t he moving? Why isn’t he there? She reaches out and it’s Gorse again and it’s the decade they’ve been together and their family and every moment alone. It’s every devotion of love made and the marriage they never needed. Why isn’t he moving closer? Was he already—_

_She can’t see him anymore. Only orange. Only white._

_Tears. Sabine’s. Ezra’s. Her’s. Ezra has his arms around her and she looks to the stars._

_The horizon of space, the longest friend she’s ever had, runs cold into her bones._

_“_ He was engulfed in the explosion while Sabine was able to fly away due to his Force push.”

 

            _Sabine is yelling. Ezra is crying. She’s staring out into a horizon. Cold metal slips into her hand. Chopper. Her droid._

_It’s not Kanan._

Silence echoes like blaster fire from the other end. Her debrief is over. They know the TIE factory is closed. There are no other details she can give—she can’t remember anything else. There’s only a war to win and a death to mourn.

 

            “Thank you, General Syndulla.” The quiet, patient voice of Senator Organa pulls her eyes to his. “I’m sorry for your loss.” There’s a second tone to his words she hears, and she thinks of his Queen. His wife. She hears _exactly_ what he’s not saying. _I know the fear of this loss. I’m sorry you’ve lived it._ The pain of the sincerity stings hot in her chest—a decade she’s had with Kanan settle agonizingly in the back of her throat, building to tears she won’t let fall. Ten years of their special, hellfire, warbent happiness entwine around her ribs and in her ears, she hears the crack of her bones.

 

            “Thank you, Senator Organa. My crew lost a lot—” _A husband. A mentor. A father. A partner. A friend. “—_ but we’ll continue on.”

 

            Silence again and she looks up to these powerful, brave beings. The blue-based imitation of their real selves cuts in half each other their determination—these are the architects of this Alliance, and the strongest voice in the beating, combined, communal hope every pilot and soldier feel. Each of them has lost. Each of them has been burned by this fire they’re stoking—they’ve each dedicated their lives to this rebellion.

 

            But, they’ve never not known a life that hasn’t been one of rebellion. It’s not to undermine their worth, but to her knowledge, they’ve never had their lives cut out of the sky. It’s unfair to make this assumption, she knows, but her grief makes it anyways—none of them had built a rebel out of shambles of themselves for the sake of someone else’s livelihood and freedom.

 

            Kanan had rebuilt his life for the Rebellion that took it. He did not die in vain, she knew it. Hera would not let herself think anything else, would not let his death be useless. But, she sees his lost soul in the lives of every Rebel, and she sees what she knew and what she loved and what she lost.

           

            He’d given so much. _Been_ so much.

 

            “My crew and I will be staying on Lothal longer. There’s work that’s to be done and we understand you may not be able to send more forces here. I won’t ask for more, but I ask for the leave to continue our work. We can do good at an impactful level. Lothal has always been a beacon for hope and I won’t see it die.” They look at each other, think it over, but Senator Organa speaks first.

 

            “Do what you must, General Syndulla. And may the Force be with you.”

           

            “May the Force be with you.” The holo cuts out and she’s left alone with silence. Chopper who has rarely left her side since Kanan’s death is with Ezra, Sabine, and Zeb now, and she’s happy for that. They need each other.

 

            The Kalikori sitting across from her next to Kanan’s mask stands as tall as he did. It’s not hard to imagine him leaning on the wall, laughing at Sabine and Ezra bickering, In fact, it’s remarkably easy to see the line of his shoulders and the way his beard shift when he smiles. It takes no effort to see Sabine and Kanan standing at each other, the dark saber in her hand, Kanan’s in his, staring across thousands of years of war and being family nonetheless. Always. In the piece she carved to represent his life, Kanan is playing sabacc with Zeb and yelling after Chopper and sitting in her copilot’s chair again. She can almost reach out her hand and feel the curve of his face and the sensation of the scarred skin across his eyes and temple. Almost.

 

            Almost.

 

            Oxygen moves through Hera’s lungs and is exhaled, and it’s disorienting how much it hurts to do something that was once so remarkably easy. Again, she closes her eyes, and again she tries to search through her mind for any sliver of clarity of Kanan’s last moments alive. Again, there’s nothing but pain.

 

            And she’s furious. Furious she died and furious she can’t remember and furious that what she has is excruciating to pick through. Kanan’s last hour alive and most of her own memory of it has been built together on someone else’s story. It’s not right that he’s dead when he deserved longer, and there’s a logical part of her mind that says _he knew the risk,_ but her pain flinches away from relief as easy as that.

 

            She’s together enough to be strong for her crew. When the General walks out, she hugs Sabine and Ezra and Zeb each as long as they need, not letting go until they do. She stays with her family and lets the silence hang and she can find enough strength to remain constant for them. Tears well in her eyes but, for the kids, she can remain together enough to hold them because no one knows Kanan for them like she did, so she can stay upright. For them. Because she has to. Because she needs to.

 

            When they go to sleep, she locks herself in a ship, flicks on the sound insulator, and screams. Screams because she should be able to remember, screams because her body still hurts from the torture, screams because she misses him and screams because they were in love during a war, but they still deserved longer. Hera fought for the future but only saw everyone else’s, never hers. Kanan saw his in his mind, and saw hers, and for them, he carried their dreams of a life together, so when Hera came to him in that way no one saw, their dreams were whole enough for her to carry, too.

 

            She screams until her voice is raw and cries until her eyes are dry and sting with the exertion. It all hurts too much, burns too hot, cuts too deep—a loss like this is not enough to bend her spine but _stars,_ does she hurt anyways.

 

            Hera looks up to the stars. Just as they were when he died, they’re cold tonight, too. She doesn’t know how to be okay without him and doesn’t know how she’s going to adjust to any normal that doesn’t have him at her side. They did things together, and now that’s broken.

 

            Trembling fingers reach out to touch the duraglass, reaching for the stars like it’s Kanan’s hand. Presses her palm to the surface like it’s his chest—closes her eyes like she would when he kissed her. Her hand falls when her screams start again, because when she opens her eyes, it’s still not him.

 

            She falls asleep in the cockpit and in the morning, she leads.

 

            She continues.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This was hard to write but still came out of me fairly quickly. Uh--actually wrote it in about two hours. Woops. But, Jedi Night/Dume left me feeling unsatisfied and gross that I was being asked to consider a moment where Hera is nonconsensually drugged as romantic. Also, feeling less than cathartic about where Kanera was left, I wanted to restructure Kanan's death in a way that gave Hera back her own.
> 
> If you liked this, please leave a comment! Please be kind with this. If you disagree unabashedly with some of the things I did with the fic---sorry not sorry but this isn't the place for you. Here were celebrate Hera Syndulla and her family.


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